A Reason for Faith: Onward Christian Egoist

As considered in this series, Rand’s standard of value was life. She recognized that each individual either acts in service of his own life, survives by feeding on the life of his neighbor, or withers and dies. Regardless of whatever method Professor Prothero uses to discern “authentic Christianity,” the apostle Paul made it clear that individuals are responsible for their own lives. 2 Thessalonians 3:6-10:

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers and sisters, to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”

That apostolic rule is conveniently forgotten by a religious Left which seeks to cast Christ as a socialist. The Bible has very little to say about civil government, its focus being an emphatic invitation to the kingdom of God. It certainly does not call for Christians to initiate force and pass it off as charity.

Sacrifice is the wedge used by the Left to drive Christians and Objectivists apart. Prothero demonstrates the tactic, presenting Rand’s aversion to sacrifice as fundamentally anti-Christian. It hardly fosters understanding when Objectivists echo this sentiment. Objectivists and Christians are not necessarily talking about the same thing, despite using the same word. As previously explored, much of what the mainstream Judeo-Christian culture considers sacrifice qualifies as rational self-interest in Objectivism. Our armed forces serve to maintain a free world in which they intend to live and pursue happiness. They do not seek to die for someone else. Yet their service is commonly regarded as sacrifice. Regardless of such semantics, both Christians and Objectivists value action taken in service of life.

OK - wait a minute. I am totally a free market liberatarian when it comes to the economy, but I have a relgious faith that is Christian.So an example:

I beleive and was taught that homosexuality is inherently wrong, I won't persecute or harm homosexuals in any way. I will however 100% oppose marriage among homosexuals that give them the same rights as heterosexuals. If I have given in on the free market to libertarians then it is they who should also compromise by saying that ones' sexual appetites one'sr own business but marriage is between a man and a woman.

If we can't get past that point, then the libertarian must choose whether he wants a free market, beacuse, trust me progressives and socialists do not or whether gay marriage is the most important issue. Ball is in your court Mr and Mrs Liberatarian. Time to choose choose wisely.

Set aside our differences? That can't happen. There are superficial similarities between the Christian-conservative and the Randian philosophies, mostly in the economic sphere. But when the foundational assumptions of two philosophies are so different, even the apparent common ground, no matter how solid it looks, will eventually give way.

As best as I can tell, Randians raise the free market up as some a sort of religion, an eschaton to which society must aspire and around which it must obediently orbit. The exaltation of man is at the very center of this.

To a Christian, the free market is not an ideal, but essentially a workaround designed to ameliorate the effects of fallen human nature. The free market is the only way to provide an economic incentive for fallen man to do things for other people -- out of regard for his own welfare. We should want to do things for others without concern for our own well-being. But we don't. The free market, for all its corruption, imbalances, appeals to greed, is all we've got.

People who exalt the Lord are warned that we cannot serve God and mammon. Worshiping mammon is not a problem for those who exalt man. This basic disconnect will keep any alliance from working. The liberals will always be able to split us: they'll shame the Randians for walking lockstep with those superstitious Christians, and they'll slyly point out to the Christians that, you know, your allies despise your Christian God. Where there are fissures due to differences in theology, no apparent congruenty can possibly mend them.

You're right about the differences in the philosophies between Christians and Randians. However, there IS a platform we can all get behind. States' rights.

IMHO, over the past 50 years or so, conservatives have gotten baited into an all-or-nothing contest with liberals. We fight over federal law when we should be fighting to do what all conservatives of every brand want: more power vested in state and local government, and less in an overarching federal monolith. We should return to our core principles; that's where we all get what we want: the right to follow our own conscience. It's also the platform we can successfully pitch to most "moderates" and even many social liberals. You want stricter gun control and gay marriage? You can have it if you pass it in your state, but you have to respect my right to fight it in my state as well. It's the core of our give-and-take republican government.

Conservatives lose because we're a very diverse group, and we can't find a candidate who can please all of us, let alone anyone on the other side of the fence. That changes if our key focus is on state's rights.

"We should want to do things for others without concern for our own well-being."

Many of us do this for our spouse, children, and dear friends. Some of us go beyond that and show love for complete strangers. For most, the best ideological way to deal with strangers is the free market. That we can all truly love each other is something like a communist ideal. It is illusory in concept and evil in practice. Why evil? Because those who would have all of us love every stranger tend to want to eliminate people who can't get with their program.

The fundamental difference between Christianity and objectivism is ownership of one's life. A Christian believes his life is or should be owned by/devoted to God or Christ. An objectivist believes she has the right to her own life. That is more irreconcilable than the dispute over abortion, as there are both pro-life objectivists and pro-choice Christians.

You are confused. Christians believe in free will and that individuals must chose to walk with God, for which they receive eternal salvation. The extensive liberty inherent in our system created by our Founding Fathers is premised on this Christian metaphysics, and responsible for the great degree of freedom and liberty the individual is inherently entitled to by their creator. There is no salvation available to those without liberty to make the choice to accept or reject God. (To do bad and stupid things or to good things and follow God's commandments).

Imagine a God that is everything. A God that encompasses everything any person knows, everything any person dreams, and everything any person cannot know or even dream of. A total God. Any other God is either equal or lesser.

The universe we understand has stable states (e.g., Christian, Muslim, and communist moralities). These too are of God. The universe has battles between these ideologies, these too are of God. I believe in natural law. My God has made me so.

The problem IMO is that one group is concerned with their spiritual life after this one on earth and the other group isn't. Those two differing views tend to lead to mistrust because Christian principles do expect you to give of yourself because we are taught that it leads to our spiritual well-being - in that sense, you could call our earthly giving a form of self-interest, but one that yields no tangible, earthly reward that the Objectivist sees, so they mistrust it or see it as worthless.

I hate to couch it in those terms, because when we buy extra groceries for the food pantry or something like that, I like doing it because it makes me feel good. I suppose you could call that my earthly reward. I like giving with the thought that I'll be helping someone who needs it and because I remember a time when I was that hungry, myself. You pay it forward.

As for the idea of abortion, the big quibble there is when the two groups see the beginning of the human life. I think it's a little too obvious to the person who really thinks about it that at some point, there's a baby, a human baby, inside the mother, and you have to consider that individual as a fully human individual with all the rights thereof. I understand that Objectivists differ and that's the sticking point, of course.

A preeminent message of the Bible and the Christian Gospel that each person is individually responsible to God. There is no mediator between God and man both Jesus Christ, who is both God and man. Even in the times of the Temple, sacrifice was only effective for the individual believer rather than effective to all of those in the Israeli society.

In this, objectivism or libertarianism is admirably correct in a Christian sense. But the great objection I have with libertarianism is that libertarians substitute their own morality, or no morality at all, for the morality described and commanded by the God.

It seems to me that many libertarians believe life, liberty and property (or pursuit of happiness) start with life in the womb. But many more, if not most, say it’s none of anyone else’s business what a person does with this new life within a woman.

The Bible calls an unborn child, that is a fetus, a baby. And God punished the nation of Israel for making their children “pass through the fire” or be burned as sacrifices. Until libertarians adopt the fundamental view that all innocent human life is to be protected and that the taking of those lives is both amoral and criminal, then there isn’t much point to arguing about guns or drugs or speed limits or taxes. And until then all that they say is subject to critical condemnation in that it sets up a two-tier society: those that are allowed the benefits of life, and those that are not.

Indeed. Libertarianism will work in a society of reasonably devout Christians. It wont work in a society of Nihilists and Hedonists, mixed in with a plethora of what have you from around the globe in a Balkanized polity....but become a dystopian nightmare of decline, if it doesnt collapse first and dissolve into civil war (think Somalia).

A major problem I have with some social conservative Christian types is their hostility towards the development of effective anti-aging biomedical technology. This is probably the number one thing that irritates me about these people these days.

I fail to see a reason for this hostility. The most fundamental individual right is to live as long as one wants. If biotechnology can cure aging and make Aubrey de Grey's prediction of a 1,000 year youthful life span a reality, there is absolutely no legitimate reason to oppose such a development. Yet, the few social conservatives who are aware of these technologies always seem to express hostility towards them.

Of course this does not endear them to someone like me who is definitely interested in living an indefinitely long youthful lifespan.

Opposition to healthy life extension is opposition to individual liberty in general.

That is why Christian organizations and churches have long been in the business of medicine and healthcare, because they were hostile to extending life.

And for the Leftwingers, they also have long been in the business of education, including the development of science....they arent anti-science yobs, but the culture and peoples that developed science to it's highest form and rigor.

My major problem people like Abelard Lindsey can be summed up by this Reagan quote.

“It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant. It's just that they know so many things that aren't so.”― Ronald Reagan

This is why it's so important to work on taking back the education system. People like Abeland Lindsey, who thinks he is reasonable and well educated and informed, have been indoctrinated with falsehoods, which they believe to be true.

You did better than me with this comment. I didn't understand a sentence of it, with all respect. As you point out, many hospitals are named Good Samaritan after Jesus' teaching on altruism, and their intent is to save lives and to heal. Notice, He never taught that the money for the wounded man's care should be repaid, either.

Let me also say that altruism is a personal responsibility, as opposed to a corporate or societal one. I find it disagreeable that with this sequester NGOs and non-profits are worrying where there money will continue to come from. They should support themselves by contributions from like-minded people and groups, but instead they are lobbying the government to take money from others in taxes and then give it to them. This isn't charity or altruism. It's not even begging. It's more like theft. And it doesn't give me a chance to decide where my charity goes, or for what purposes.

While I can't speak for him, I believe Abelard Lindsey is specifically referring to conservative (but not Christian) Leon Kass and, to a lesser extent, thinkers like Francis Fukuyama. Both have been highly critical of life extension, cloning and other technological interventions in human biology as bioethicists for usually explicitly religious reasons. For background, look up President Bush's Council on Bioethics or Pinker's essay, "The Stupidity of Dignity."

How many ways can you be wrong?1.your life is not your own and your days ARE numbered;2. What you want is irrelevant(well, it should be);3. Who do you trust? In G-d's wisdom, or do you run to man for the answers/cure/wisdom?4. What was written in the owners manual about age vs youth? About my Physician,Healer, Provider, Counselor... You Cannot serve/be faithful to 2 diametrically opposed kingdoms, but it never surprises me that Believers alway try....

"There are some prominent areas of reconcilable disagreement, such as the issue of abortion."

Reconcilable how? As recently as January of this year, Paul Ryan, touted as one of the new dynamic future leaders of the Republican party, sponsored the Sanctity of Human Life Act, a bill that gives full legal rights to human zygotes from the moment of fertilization.

Presumably reconciliation means that the Objectivists would give ground on this issue.

With all due respect, you have spent a considerable amount of column space attempting to reconcile Christianity with Objectivism philosophically, when the truth is that any agreement is purely coincidental and in no way fundamental. I would argue that you could have saved a lot of effort by starting and ending with your "bottom line: the Left has much to lose from a coalition between Christians and Objectivists."

As would any coalition; the subjects of your articles could be about any two unrelated interest groups.

With this in mind, the question becomes whose value system is more malleable in the the political context, who will blink first in compromising their philosophical underpinning for a greater political advantage?

This kind of compromise seams to me to be a huge nut to crack. A Christian supporting an "individual rights"candidate whose platform includes the support of Gay marriage? An Objectivist concerned with any action that enhances a greater good, political or otherwise, at the expense of some part of his "reason as method'?

Ayn Rand was openly hostile to Faith: "Faith is the worst curse of mankind, as the exact antithesis and enemy of thought."

While Objectivism's contemporary commentary is more measured, it is unequivocal in it's objections to using Faith and Religion as a means of informing man's actions and objectives, presumably including those in the political realm.

The problem with Objectivists is the problem with any Year Zero movement. It throws the baby out with the bathwater, and ends up in a utopian hell.

The Objectivists could benefit from 1000s of years of Christian philosophical output and practical experience, but alas...they know better dont ya know....unlike those superstitious causers of the Dark Ages. (How ignorant is that reading of history).

Anyways, Christians are the vast majority of this country and thus Objectivists will just have to pick their poison. Leftwing Totalitarians or Christian Classical Liberals.

Im tired of hearing their carping crap. Interestingly enough, they make common cause with the Left in their Anti-Christian crusades, for example the radicalization and universalization of the Establishment Clause. Push Christians and their religion into their basements. That type of thing.

For shame.

Here's hoping Christian civilization continues and doesnt walk down another dissasterous Godless utopian vision....where reason is used to rationalize all sorts of evil.

That was meant to be "irreconcilable," not reconcilable. I'm not sure how that slipped through my many proofreads. Does what I wrote make more sense to you with that clarification?

I have not been attempting to reconcile Christianity and Objectivism philosophically. At root, they do not reconcile. They can, however, peacefully co-exist and work in common cause. On gay marriage, both Christians and Objectivists should favor government getting out of the word-defining business and simply enforcing contract. On any political issue, Christians have nothing to fear in deferring to reason. Religious freedom would be protected under objectivist principles.

I would say that religion _should_ be protected under Objectivist principles the same way that individual freedom _should_ be protected under Christian ones, but as you and I well know, the instincts of other people to meddle in the lives of their fellows for "our own good" often trumps principle.

The writers on this site must hate the new comments system. This is a well thought out, interesting essay that should have attracted dozens of comments and has exactly zero as of this comment 3/2/13.

Why read, compose and respond to posts when the efforts are memory holed in the blink of an eye. I don’t think the agents of change thought about how hard a slap they were administrating to the commenters.

Generally Walter's threads don't attract as many comments the first go around but when it gets promoted as it is with the main page linking, it starts garnering comments. Give it a few more days: Walter's "Religion vs. Ayn Rand" columns usually garners comments.

There are some things about the new system that I like, and some things I don't. I do, for example, find it much easier to actually get a comment posted. There are less instances of error or "you are posting too quickly" in this system. However, I do miss the ability to edit after I post.